RF Lot Control Guidelines

You may have product in your warehouse that you receive as a whole but sell in varying quantities, such as wire. Lot control these items to correctly track quantity.

For example, you order wire on large 5000 feet reels, but you sell the wire in different increments. You need to track the amount of wire you have on each reel so that you know at all times the remaining quantity on each reel.

In addition, use lots to manage remnants. Remnants are pieces of leftover product, such as wire, that you cannot cut but need to sell as a whole. If a customer asks for 50 feet of wire, and you have a remnant of 57 feet, select the remnant instead of cutting 50 feet of a 1000 feet reel. Set up remnants by assigning remnant locations in RF Location Maintenance . Set up lot controlled product in Product Location Maintenance.

Working with lot controlled items in RF Warehouse Management requires a few additional steps in the receiving and picking processes.

Receiving Lot Controlled Items

When you receive lot controlled product into inventory, you need to scan or print a lot label in addition to the product bar code label. If the vendor does not provide a lot label, use one of the following screens to print lot labels:

Tote/Lot Label Printing screen - Prints unique lot labels for items in numerical sequence.
Product Lot Barcode Labels screen - Prints pre-defined lot labels for items.

If the Prompt To Print Lot Barcode Labels In RF Receive Verifycontrol maintenance record is set to Y for the branch in which you are receiving the lot controlled product, the system automatically prompts you to print lot labels during the receive verify process. The lot numbers that the system assigns are not pre-defined.

If you receive lot controlled product that you need to split during receive verify, print lot labels for each item.

For example, your purchasing agent orders 20,000 feet of wire. The vendor sends the wire in four 5000 feet reels. You cannot receive all reels as one item. Instead, print four separate lot labels and receive each reel as one lot.

During put away, the system directs you to the location for the lot controlled product as is defined in Product Location Maintenance.

Picking Lot Controlled Items

When a sales agent enters an order for lot controlled items, the Lot Selection window displays all of that product's lots and respective quantities. The sales agent can select a lot or the system can allocate the lot. If the system allocates the lot, it selects the location with the smallest amount of quantity that can fill the order in a single pick. During picking, the system directs you to the selected or allocated lot.

For example, a customer orders 1500 feet of wire. Two lots can fill the order in a single pick - lot A has 2000 feet of wire and lot B has 1600 feet of wire. The system allocates the pick to lot B because it has the smallest amount of quantity. The system then directs the picker to lot B during picking.